IBM X3500 - Manual (Page 2)

A stable, long-life, dual-socket, dual- and quad-core SMP
server, offering high-performance, massive capacity and
outstanding availability
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2
dual-core processors.
• Ultra-fast fully buffered 667MHz PC2-5300 DDR II ECC memory with Chipkill protection provides
speed and high availability.
• Three high-speed PCI-E and two PCI-X adapter slots offer potential investment protection by
supporting high-performance adapters, such as 10Gb Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand cards,
none of which will run in older 33MHz and 66MHz conventional PCI slots.
• Integrated ServeRAID-8k provides RAID-0/1/10/1E/5/6 support standard and without consuming a
valuable adapter slot. RAID-0/00 offer improved disk performance via data striping; the other RAID
levels combine the benefits of speed and availability.
• Up to eight 3.5-inch or twelve 2.5-inch hot-swap SAS hard disk drives offer high-performance with
high availability. The SAS controller provides full-duplex ( 2 x 300MBps) data transfers for SAS drives.
For lower cost and high capacity, hot-swap Serial ATA II drives can be used. The SATA II drives offer
performance nearly equal to that of Ultra320 SCSI (300MBps half-duplex vs. 320MBps half-duplex,
respectively).
• The integrated dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers with IPMI 2.0 support provide high-speed network
communications.
• A high degree of device integration, including SAS, RAID, dual Gigabit Ethernet, systems
management and video controllers, helps to lower costs and frees up valuable adapter slots.
Flexibility
The x3500 has the ability to grow with your application requirements, thanks to:
• Support for a choice of quad-core processors, with 1.6 to 3.0GHz clock rates, 1033MHz or 1333MHz
FSB, 8MB or 12MB of L2 cache, and 80W or 120W power draw.
• Support for a choice of dual-core processors with 1.6 to 3.0GHz clock rates, 1033MHz or 1333MHz
FSB, 4MB or 8MB of L2 cache, and 65W or 80W power draw
• Up to 48GB of high-speed fully-buffered DDR2 system memory.
• Three available high-performance PCI-E adapter slots, two PCI-X slots, and one legacy PCI slot in
all models.
• The slotless ServeRAID-8k controller with 256MB of battery-backed cache provides high-performance
hardware RAID support, offering six RAID levels, including RAID-1E, 5 and 6.
• The five USB 2.0 ports (four external, one internal) are up to 40X faster
2 than older USB 1.1 ports.
This provides speedy access to external HDDs (non-arrayed), optical drives, tape drives, and other
USB devices. Two ports are on the front of the unit and two are on the back.
• Up to eight internal 3.5-inch or 12 2.5-inch HDDs, and a half- or full-high tape drive offer
tremendous internal storage capability, along with full data backup. Models offer a maximum of 2.4TB
of hot-swap 3.5-inch SAS, 1.76TB of hot-swap 2.5-inch SAS, or 6.0TB of hot-swap SATA storage
internally.
• Alternatively, iSCSI or Fibre Channel-attached storage can be attached using IBM System Storage
™
or TotalStorage ™ servers.
Manageability
Powerful systems management features simplify local and remote management of the x3500:
• The x3500 includes a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) to monitor server availability,
perform Predictive Failure Analysis, etc., and trigger IBM Director alerts. The BMC enables service
personnel to use sophisticated diagnostic tools, such as light path diagnostics, to resolve problems
quickly.
• Integrated IPMI 2.0 support alerts IBM Director to anomalous environmental factors, such as voltage
and thermal conditions. It also supports highly secure remote power control using data encryption.
• Text Console Redirection support allows the administrator to remotely view x3500 text messages
over Serial or LAN.
• IBM Director is provided for proactive systems management. It comes with a portfolio of tools,
including Management Processor Assistant, RAID Manager, Update Assistant, Software Distribution
and a Real Time Diagnostics tool. In addition, IBM Director offers extended systems management tools
for additional server management and increased availability.
• An optional Remote Supervisor Adapter II SlimLine provides additional systems management
capabilities, including Web-based out-of-band control; virtual floppy and optical drive support; Windows
“blue screen” error capture; LDAP and SSL support; and remote redirection of PCI video, text,
keyboard and mouse. It also adds PFA support for fans. And it does all this without consuming a
valuable adapter slot.
2 Data transfer rates may be less than the maximum possible.